Reviewing the Pact on Migration and Asylum

The EU has reached a deal on a sweeping overhaul of EU migration enforcement. Unfortunately, the regulations which have been passed are a fundamental breach of not only the principals of dignity upon which the EU has prided itself, but also of fundamental human rights, writes Labour Party MEP Aodhán Ó Ríordáin.

The deal is called the Pact on Migration and Asylum and the European Commission describes it as a “comprehensive package of 10 legislative acts which sets out common procedures for screening and registering irregular arrivals at EU borders, with swifter asylum and return procedures, clear rules on the responsibility for asylum applications, and a solidarity mechanism to support EU countries facing migratory pressure”.

This seemingly bland description belies an agreement which has ridden roughshod over human rights. Among the new acts are the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (which replaces the Dublin III Regulation), the Screening Regulation, and the Receptions Conditions Directive.

The commission claims that the Receptions Conditions Directive is the main mechanism for protecting rights, saying it “establishes EU-wide standards, strengthening safeguards, establishing minimum living conditions, and improving integration support for asylum seekers”.

The truth is that the new regulations allow for warrantless home raids on private residences and hospitals, deportation to offshore ‘return hubs’ in countries people may have no connection with, and detention of up to two years, including for children.

Critics, including Amnesty International and the EU’s own Fundamental Rights Agency, have warned that the measures are legally dubious, rights-violating, and echo the worst of Trump-era immigration enforcement.

Eve Geddie from Amnesty International states: “It is clearer than ever that this EU Pact on Migration and Asylum will set back European asylum law for decades to come, lead to greater suffering, and put more people at risk of human rights violations at every step of their journeys.”

My group, the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, have opposed the pact, calling it a deal that “tramples fundamental rights and takes migration policy backwards”.

And yet, despite all this, there is no evidence this pact will even limit arrivals of refugees in Europe.

It just means more people will have no access to an asylum procedure at all, as the screening process allows states to refuse access to territory, through issuing a ‘briefing form’ which is not a decision and therefore cannot be challenged.

States will be able to decide that cases are inadmissible without any hearing on the merits of the case.

While returns of migrants are obviously part of a functioning migration system, they must be justifiable, safe, proportionate, and dignified. It makes no sense to return people who have established productive and meaningful lives in work or education merely to appease a growing racist and anti-immigrant fear.

It makes even less sense to deport children or adults who have never lived in, and have no connection to the country they are being deported to. While Fine Gael politicians go to Washington every year to lobby for amnesty for undocumented Irish immigrants, their MEPs are back in Brussels voting to lock up migrants in detention centres outside the EU. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.

“The new regulations allow for warrantless home raids on private residences and hospitals, deportation to offshore ‘return hubs’ in countries people may have no connection with, and detention of up to two years.”
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin MEP

In addition to the human rights consequences, the process by which the pact was passed has seriously damaged the coalition of the pro-European centre ground and weakened the European Union itself.

The deal was driven through by a coalition of the centre-right and far-right groups in the Parliament, including Fine Gael’s own European People’s Party which has once again found common cause with anti-European far-right to make this happen.

What makes this worse is that the reforms will not do anything to address conflicts over migration that are being stoked here in Ireland. Racist attacks make little differentiation between people here on work visas, naturalised citizens, or people seeking international protection.

There is another way. Spain, under the social democratic government of Pedro Sánchez, has committed to regularise 500,000 undocumented migrants. In so doing, they are treating people with dignity but also growing their economy.

Spain now has the fastest-growing economy in the Eurozone, in no small part due to its recognition that Europe’s economy needs migrants. That is what a sensible migration policy looks like.

Our worst fears of the damage that this pact will do have been illustrated by seeing a Taliban delegation scheduled for talks with the European Union focused on deporting refugees to Afghanistan.

Talks with the same Taliban which has engaged in public execution, arbitrary detention, and brutal subjugation of women and girls who have effectively been removed from all public life.

The fact that the new ‘returns regime’ is so explicitly fostering co-operation with one of the worst regimes in the world is irrefutable evidence that Europe has lost its way. The consequences are serious, and we must fight to protect our values and our democracy.

In Article 3.5 of the Treaty on European Union, all member states commit to “the protection of human rights, in particular the rights of the child, as well as to the strict observance and the development of international law, including respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter”.

Labour and the Socialists and Democrats in Europe will always stand against politics that seeks to scrape the bottom of the barrel and undermine those rights. We cannot support this pact.